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Exceptional Hardship for Architect Client

You might think these have little in common but for my client Sarah they were intrinsically linked.

I recently had the privilege of supporting the delightful Sarah through her speeding matter at Oxford Magistrates Court. You see Sarah and her husband Mike ran their own business, providing employment to 7 staff, they were expanding this and hoping to take on another trainee, they were moving house and they were also trying to adopt a baby. And yes, it was a stressful time.

Moving house, to a new area, and driving down unfamiliar rotes, Sarah misjudged a speed limit and received a ticket for speeding, in fact she misjudged a couple of roads. She fully accepted that she had made a mistake and that she deserved to be punished for them.

What she didn’t want to do was lose her licence for 6 months as a totter. Not for herself but for the impact on others. You see as an architect, as the only fully qualified architect in the business, it was her job to go out and scope the development sites, to determine what would work. It wasn’t something that someone else could do and it wasn’t something that could be done remotely – she needed to see the properties to be able to understand what was needed and what would work for those spaces. She needed to be mobile.

Training as an architect takes 8 years – with 2 separate placements to be completed – totaling 3 years on top of the 5 years of studying. At the time of contacting us Sarah was employing 3 aspiring architects – none of whom were ready or able to do the work Sarah did, but all who needed Sarah’s training and support to reach their dream.

Sarah knew that the loss of her licence would mean the business would fail, that the future of these youngsters would be impacted. She commented to me at one point that they had had 40 applications for the most recent vacancy she had filled – training placements were highly competitive.

She was also adopting, or trying to. Sarah and Mike had been going through this process for almost 3 years, jumping through the endless hoops being asked of them. Sarah was worried that the loss of her licence would be viewed negatively by the Adoption Agency and put all their hard work at risk.

We were able to work with Sarah to show the impact the loss of her licence would have on those around her, to show that, in her case, a disqualification of 6 months would cause her, and those around her, Exceptional Hardship.

If you are at risk of losing your licence then give Forrest Williams a call on 01623 600645 and we would be explore if an Exceptional Hardship application would be an appropriate option for yourself.